Since the 1970s the United States are engaged in a domestic debate on their growing bilateral trade deficit and indebtedness vis-à-vis their main economic competitor, a role that shifted from Japan to China in the mid-1990s. One remarkable feature of the present-day discourse on the ‘Rise of China’ relates to its significant resemblance to what was treated as “Japan Problem” until the 1990s, at that time ensuing in a severe crisis in the U.S.-Japanese relationship. Despite of fundamental differences between Japan and China themselves, as well as in their bilateral relationship with the U.S., the main line of argument in both cases amounts to reproaching Japan/China for their ‘unfair practices’ (e.g. ‘closed markets’ and ‘currency manipulation’) resulting in their competitive advantage. In this paper I argue, that the past and present debates can not be sufficiently understood without considering them in terms of identity constructions relying on Self/Other articulations. This assessment originates in poststructuralist-inspired theories that regard every identity as differential and non-essential, thus in permanent need of a constitutive outside. Discourse Theory (DT) is put forward as an analytical framework for the study of foreign policy, while also addressing the so-called ‘methodological deficit’ of DT and proposing a method for its application in empirical research.
